| |
Site Navigation
Main
News
Forums
Games
Games Database
Top 100
Release List
Support Files
Features
Reviews
Previews
Interviews
Editorials
Diaries
Misc
Download
Gallery
Music
Screenshots
Videos
Miscellaneous
Staff Members
Privacy Statement
|
|
Lar stopped by at the Larian Studios Forum and had this to say about the current development status.Boy it's quiet over here. I just finished a straight rush of 15 hours of localization fun, then had a few laughs with how Divinity looks in French and German, and decided to chill out by coming here and have a look to see if anything new transpired, maybe even reply to a few posts Given that there are no burning questions I could see, I guess I can post some info. Here's what's keeping us busy:
1) Pressure is mounting as we're prepping for release. Clock just turned midnight, so that means we have 45 days left before the gold master of Divinity has to be ready. March 15th is the date that's been ironed as master date. Failure to deliver in time we've been told would be a very bad thing, though we didn't really require any telling, and by the looks of the game right now, I do have the distinct impression we'll make it ( Though I would've preferred maybe one extra month to polish a few things which have been working on my nerves for quite some time, but that's just me being myself I guess). Our biggest problem right now is getting sufficient QA feedback as the buglist is starting to look very manageable, and that actually worries us That's why Lynn posted the news item for more testers. We've just bought a new array of machines so that we can increase the amount of daily testers in our offices, and amazingly enough, I look forward to receiving them (and the bugs they'll bring). Gives me something to do
2) The artists are burning kerosine on finishing the two final cutscenes and the artwork for the manual - hot stuff in those things, and as much as it shames me, I was really surprised by the quality they delivered. It really looks good. Some screenshots will be made available somewhere this month.
3) We'll be delivering the final version of the demo in three languages (french,german and english) beginning of next week to CDV, so I think it's coming your way beginning of march. It'll include voice overs btw, something which started last week, and which should be finished in a few weeks - and if I can believe Stefaan who frequents the sound studio, it all sounds really really good. I'm looking forward to receiving the english files somewere next week. I guess we'll put up some samples for you to listen to, so you get an idea of what to expect in terms of voice quality.
4) We've got I-need-no-sleep Hannes working on finishing what I assume wil be a rather sexy trailer for Divinity any day now, so that one will be coming your way pretty soon too. The footage that was taken looked rather cool, so I think you'll be happy with the result.
5) Lynn's been losing a lot of sleep working on finalizing the layout for the manual which will contain a rather nice background story written by Damon Wilson, one of the UK chaps who wrote the dialogs (the other brit being Darren Wilson who among other things wrote the manual).
6) Like it said, we're also finishing the localizations for French and German which caused quite some laughs (Sheloi! Ihr redet im Wahn, Mardaneus! Ihr müsst Euch ausruhen. Kommt, lasst mich Euch heimbringen. - Sheloi°! Tu délires, Mardaneus ! Tu dois te reposer. Viens, je te ramène chez toi.- Sheloi! You're raving Mardaneus! You must take more rest. Come: let me take you home.)
7) Bugfixing and balancing obviously take most of the time of the storyteam and the programmers, my poor self included, and I can see why the stats say testers have reduced life-spans. We've got some very good QA people over here, taking good care of checking if bugs are duplicates, finding ways of reproducing them, and giving us as much info as possible, so it is kind of pleasant to fix them, but still, reduced life spans, that I can understand
8) Talking about balancing, you don't want to know the kinds of things we're looking at right now - trying to figure questions like "What's wrong with the following table ?"
Amount of generated eggs: 30
Amount of manual eggs: 3
Total amount of eggs 33
Total experience generated eggs: 17150
Total experience manual eggs: 405
Total experience points: 17555
Total gold value: 8088
Minor stamina - value 50
Plate Helmet - value 900
Pile of gold - value 106
Poison - value 300
Pile of gold - value 107
Metal Shield - value 1100
Healing - value 150
Sabre of master summoning - value 3250
Healing - value 150
Healing - value 150
Poison - value 300
Sword of snow - value 1400
Pile of gold - value 125
)
9) This week also brought us a major event, the likes of which we've never seen - Kirill showing up on the forum ! And what's even more - Kirill filling in questionaires from localhost/rpgdot.rpgwatch.com/httpdocs.
10) My tooth aches - it's been bumming me for 15 days straight now, with a stop of 2 days - and I don't have time to go to the dentist and it sucks but it gives me something to complain about and if you wonder what it has to do with Divinity, it has everything to do with it because it wakes me up after 3 hours of sleep or so so I can spend even more time on the game and that's a good thing so I don't want to go to the dentist and therefore tell myself I have no time though I would actually have time because the tooth-ache saves me time but this way maybe it'll be finished sooner and I can keep on dreaming
11) Grischa stopped smoking ! Third day now and rather impressive.
12) Seeing that I am deteriorating in fait divers, I think I'm going to go to sleep now.
Goodnight all.
Lar So gold master in March... add to that a week or two to get things ready and shipped, which could mean we can have a go at it in early May.... Kewl :-) |
|
|
Divine Divinity Demo in March
